Today is the last day of the first week of training. Usually the classes are more staggered, with one location starting one week, followed by the other location. This time, however, they both started at the same time, which means that instead of easing into it, I've jumped in to a four day 3 hours a day training regime all at once.

At first I thought that my body might be in shock, as I didn't feel any of the usual workout pain I normally do at the start of class. Not even in my arms after doing Tuesday's weight session. Then yesterday happened. It wasn't so much in the morning, but by the afternoon my legs were (and remain) in crippling agony. We did a lot of skipping on Monday, and my calves are simply not having any of it. Tonight will be interesting....

Also absent was my normal appetite. I'm normally hungry when I arrive home from training, and starving when I get up in the morning. Neither of these things were true during this week.

Until this morning, when I felt hungry enough to eat one of the cats. Perhaps both. I didn't. The cats are both perfectly fine and alive and uneaten, but I was hungry! I still am, actually, despite having just finished my usual obscenely large breakfast (on training days, I eat a tonne of food). I feel better about myself now. I was worried I was sick without feeling it. You must understand, I never skip a meal. Never. It was really weird that I wasn't hungry at all during this week. Until today.

Anyway, things are back to normal. The pain will subside and I'll get used to the training schedule. By the end of next week, it'll be old hat and I will be less likely to complain.

Last night I taught my first class as the instructor for Introduction to Self-Defence at Carleton University Athletics. It was quite fun. This week was the try any class free week, and a fair few people showed up to try out the class. I had fun teaching, and I hope they had fun as well. With luck, there will be a couple of new registrations for the class for next week. It was good. It felt very odd introducing myself as the instructor for the class though.

Writing did not happen yesterday, and likely will not happen today, since I'm supposed to be giving myself the day off. I did, however, reread what I had already written of Daughters of Britain, and I quite like what I have down. I did a cursory edit as I went. Not many changes at all. When I hit the end of the story I have thus far, I did fair fair amount of brow furrowing. I have no idea where I meant the story to go from where I left off. I mean, I know the basics - how the story ends and the gist of what happens between the start of the book and the end of the book. It's just that I don't have a clue what the next step I had in mind was.

Luckily, I must have had an inkling this would be the case, so I apparently left myself a link to some research I had been doing. The link led to an article about the Batavian Revolt of 70AD. I guess I was going to write about that particular fight that Rome picked.

By the by, Rome in this period was an absolute bastard. Oh, I'm sure there were good, honest, hard-working Romans that really had no idea about nor did they contribute to the actions of the empire as a whole, but holy shit Rome pulled some awful stuff. They really were incredible arseholes.

That's quite an aside. I have Welsh lessons to be getting on with, so here is an image for you to ponder:

The face shield of a high-ranking Batavii cavalryman. Note the torc around his neck. The Batavii settled lands that once belonged to the Euburiates, a Gaulish-speaking people. While there is some debate, no one is quite sure whether the native Gaulish populace of what became Batavia were completely displaced of if they were absorbed, the cultures blending. My guess is that there was a fair amount of cultural blending. Image courtesy of taaldacht.nl. Click for link.

You may find Roman Spaces by Eric Morse (Iguana Books) interesting. He deals with that period of the Roman Empire from a military point of view, and with a modern political eye. Full disclosure, we've known Eric from university days and he is our daughter's godfather.